


That Reluctant Goodbye and Nostalgic Hello

by ObscureReference



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Awakening Character Cameos, Dimension Travel, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 20:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14961308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: He opened his eyes to find a small knife pressed under his chin.He hadn’t been quite asleep, but he hadn’t been awake either. Niles, clearly not recognizing who he was, held up the knife with the obvious intent to kill the intruder who had invaded a prince of Nohr’s quarters in the dead of night.“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” Niles asked lowly. The cold, pointed end of the knife pricked the underside of his chin even harder.“Niles,” he said. “It’s me.”For a moment he was afraid that his voice was too different now, that the miniscule changes in his face were just enough to render him unrecognizable. Then Niles wavered, pulling the knife back slightly.“Odin?” Niles said incredulously.





	That Reluctant Goodbye and Nostalgic Hello

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kimium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimium/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift to my good friend Kimium! She's the best, and I write fic with her a lot, but I'm glad to be able to write a fic for her this time. She asked for something a little more Niles focused and including Odin telling the truth about his origins. @Kimium, I'm not sure I fulfilled the prompt 100%, but I hope I got close enough that you enjoy this fic anyway! And there's a shorter drabble on my tumblr that maybe get a bit closer to the prompt as well.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

He carefully picked his way through the bedroom he, Niles, and Leo had shared once upon a time, making his way to the large windowsill on the far side of the room. Niles had often sat there on cloudless evenings in Nohr, looking up at the moon. He wasn’t sure where else to sit.

It had been months since he’d set foot in this space.

What would Leo and Niles say when they saw him? How could he explain it all to them? How would he even introduce himself now—Odin or Owain? He looked different now. Did that mean he would be a different person too?

He wasn’t sure about the answers to any of those questions, so he kept moving, periodically pausing to examine the slight changes in the room without touching anything as he went.

Leo’s bedroom was more or less the same. Letters covered in Leo’s handwriting sat scattered atop the desk. One of Niles’s spare cloaks hung off the back of the wardrobe. The room was otherwise mostly clean. There were less of his own things laying around than there had been in his memory, but that was to be expected. He’d been gone, after all. It only made sense that his things—the unpleasant reminders of his existence—had been disposed of. He was marginally surprised, however, to find his old circlet sitting amongst the letters on Leo’s desk. Something gnawed at his heart at the sight, and he turned away.

It was late. Leo and Niles were likely still working, but they would be back eventually. Unless they were on some kind of diplomatic mission now. He hoped the ties between Nohr and Hoshido were growing strong now that the war was likely over—at least, he _hoped_ it was over—but he wasn’t sure what he would do if Niles and Leo would be gone for the next few days or even weeks. He told himself that he’d deal with it later, if that was what had happened at all.

There wasn’t much to be done in the meantime. At the very least, he resolved to wait.

He sat in the cushioned windowsill like he had seen Niles do so many times before and then, sure that nobody would be coming in any time soon, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

 

 

 

He had expected to feel good at the end of it all, triumphant, but all Odin had felt was static and void.

It wasn’t quite pain. Not quite torture. But when Corrin struck the finishing blow and the Silent Dragon writhed in its final death rattle, an indescribable emptiness blossomed in Odin’s stomach, more acute than any spell he’d ever experienced. His fingers tingled. His skin vibrated. Odin fell, clutching his abdomen with a gasp and a whimper.

 _“Odin!”_ For a moment Niles’s ragged voice sounded far away, but then he was dropping to his knees in front of Odin, face twisted with concern. There was a sluggishly bleeding cut over his eye. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

He pulled at Odin’s wrist, trying to force Odin to uncurl for himself, but there would be no wound to find, Odin knew. Odin shook his head and pressed his face into Niles’s neck. He felt unwell.

Niles had his arms wrapped around Odin’s torso in an instant. For a brief moment Odin felt comforted, safe, but then awful feeling pulsed again in his gut and Odin shuddered.

He felt Niles’s hand on the back of his neck, fingering his hair. “ _Odin_. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Odin forced his eyes open, squinting. Somewhere off in the distance, he saw Leo clamber off his horse and swiftly rush towards them. He closed his eyes again as another wave of uneasiness washed over him.

Niles’s breath hitched. It wasn’t a good sound. Odin felt sicker, number, and he pressed himself against Niles even more. Not even Niles’s warm presence could ease the chill seeping into him. Odin was barely aware of his body anymore. There was some kind of tingle that had begun in his toes and had worked its way up to his ribcage already. It wasn’t pleasant.

 _“Odin,”_ Niles said again, sounding wretched. His fingers dug into Odin’s skin even tighter. Odin was aware of this fact, but he didn’t particularly feel it.

He opened his eyes again. Leo was nearly to them now, but somehow Odin didn’t think he would make it in time. Still pressed into Niles’s neck, Odin gathered enough energy to rasp the beginnings of Niles’s name.

Then all was black.

 

 

 

He awoke under the branches of the Mila tree.

He didn’t recognize the tree at first, though it was unmistakable in its radiance. Then, as the sunlight filtered through the forest of intertwining leaves above, he came back to himself.

Odin sucked in a breath so sharp it burned. He ignored the aching in his muscles and pushed himself upright. He didn’t miss the handful of leaves and small twigs that gently fell off his clothes as he moved either.

Soft flowers had sprouted between his boot-covered ankles. The roots of the tree were thick and sturdy under his legs, but a layer of cool moss kept the bark from scratching at him uncomfortably. Odin felt strangely warmer than he remembered feeling in a long while. When he looked down, he found yellow sleeves and a familiar white fur trim around his wrists.

He flexed his fingers. They were stiff.

It felt as though Odin had just woken up from a very long nap.

For a moment he was struck with the awful thought that he’d simply been asleep, that Nohr had been nothing but a dream that had dragged on and on and on.

Then he heard his name.

“Odin.”

He turned his neck so quickly it popped. Inigo—and it was a sleepy looking  _Inigo_  sitting up there, not Laslow, for a million reasons on a list that began with his pink hair and old clothes and ended somewhere around the somewhat youthful curve of his cheeks—looked back at him.

Inigo’s eyes tiredly flickered up and down his form. Then he amended, “Owain.”

Owain reached up, touching the short ends of his hair. His hair wasn’t long enough to tug on the ends and bring them into his line of sight like Severa, who had also just woken up, was doing, but he knew with a certainly he couldn’t explain that he looked like Odin Dark no longer.

The only proof that Nohr and its inhabitants had not been some kind of fantasy was the fist-sized crystal swirling with magic he later found in his pocket.

 

 

 

It took a month to return to Ylisse.

What else was there to do?

Many things, Owain knew. There were many things to do and many things they could have done.

But for all the sorrow and regret churning in their gullets, for all they wanted to return to Nohr and explain everything and say a proper goodbye, it had been years since they had been home, and the crystal in Owain’s pocket was going nowhere. They only had one, after all. This was not a decision to be made in haste, no matter their immediate feelings. There were people who had been waiting for them on this side of the realms as well.

So they went home.

They found their luggage waiting for them at the base of the tree, untouched by time. When Inigo opened up his bag, he let out a delighted cry and pulled out a forgotten sack of candy he had apparently stashed away. They were somewhat stale but still good. Severa cooed over a set of hairclips she had lost before arriving in Nohr. They all pretended not to see the wet shine in each other’s eyes.

Owain adjusted his grip on the sword he had not held in a long, long time, and willed it to feel like an extension of himself again.

 

 

 

When they stopped by a river to drink and Owain caught sight of his reflection in the waters—dark hair, dark eyes, lacking a few faint scars he knew he should have had, Exhalt brand nestled neatly in his elbow—he stared for a long while, unsure of what to think.

That uncertain feeling in his chest lingered for so long Owain began to believe it was permanent.

They didn’t talk much on the way back. The musical vowels of Ylissian sounded strange after years of speaking crisp Nohrian or swift Hoshidan. There was too much that could have been said, so they said nothing.

They walked in the day and camped at night until they made it to the nearest port town. Then they sold themselves as mercenaries and booked themselves guarding the first merchant ship traveling to Ylisse that they could find.

The trip was largely uneventful. Every day was sunny except for one, and that night all three of them sat in the depths of the hull, reminded of the gloomy Nohrian days and the way the heavy rain echoed on the rooftops.

On the last day, mere hours from landfall and standing on the bow of the ship, Severa looked out across the waters to the lump of land in the distance and said, “We’re home.”

And they were.

 

 

 

It wasn’t until they reached home for real that Owain, feeling newly twenty and decades older all at once, threw himself into his mother’s arms and cried.

 

 

 

Months, his mother said. They had been gone for months. Nearly a year with no word from any of them, despite the fleeting visits of the other future children, and _oh_ , how they had worried.

No, Owain wanted to say. _Years_. Plural. They had been gone for _years_.

But the flow of time between worlds was fickle, and Owain’s body felt younger and newer and, most of all, different from the body he should have had. He lacked the evidence to prove that he had ever been to Nohr, had ever shot magic from his fingertips, had served in yet another war. This was not quite the body that had laid atop Leo and listened to his prince breathe at night, that had felt Niles’s trailing kisses down his neck on sultry afternoons.

He got used to it, eventually. But it was yet another thing that set apart who he was now from the person he imagined in his mind. From where he imagined himself to be in his mind.

 

 

 

Brady cried, of course. He cried large, rolling tears that never seemed to end. Owain had taken the smack to the back of his head with dignity and then listened to Brady’s sobbing apologies as he inevitably regretted ever raising his hand, even if it hadn't really hurt.

Aunt Maribelle threw her arms around him much the same way her son had, minus the overabundant crying. She looked a little misty-eyed, however, and Owain couldn’t claim his eyes to be entirely dry either.

Lucina welcomed him back with a smile and the tightest hug he’d ever received. Uncle Chrom squeezed his shoulder and told him they were glad he was home. Cynthia greeted him with a whoop and a plea for a rundown of all the adventures he’d been on during his disappearing act, which he’d carefully sidestepped.

There was a party. Noire baked a small personal cake and handed it off to him when nobody was looking. Owain took one bite and deemed it the Jamboree of Eternal Salutations, which seemed to delight her. Kjelle gave him an acknowledging nod. Nah gave him a book she thought he’d like and a brief rundown of everything he had missed in the past few months. He thanked her for it, grateful to catch up with them all.

He, Inigo, and Severa didn’t look at each other all night.

They had seen a lot of each other in the past few years, after all. It was only due that they mix it up now that they had the ability.

(Amidst the hellos and heartfelt hugs, Owain’s heart ached for both the here and now as well as the far away.)

 

 

 

Leaving was hard.

It probably would always be the hardest thing Owain had ever done.

He held his parents for a long, long time and promised that he’d figure a way to return, one day. The idea was neigh impossible. He meant it.

Then he, Severa, and Inigo gathered in a field outside of Ylisstol and, with a final goodbye to their friends and family who had gathered to see them off, used the crystal.

 

 

 

It had been the early afternoon when they’d left Ylisse, but when the magic faded and the light left them, Owain was only mildly surprised to find the sun had vanished from Nohr. Sunlight had never been one of Nohr's strengths in the first place.

When they arrived, it took only a moment to realize that they hadn’t changed. That Severa’s hair wasn’t red again, that Owain’s clothes had stayed the same, that Inigo looked no older than he had under the Ylissian sun. The lack of change made sense, in hindsight. He wasn’t sure what he was expected.

He had never been simply “Owain” within Nohr’s borders before either. He certainly wasn’t Odin Dark any longer. He didn’t quite know what that made him now.

They looked at each other one last time and crept off into the night.

It was late, but there were people they needed to greet. Separately. They’d meet again later.

 

 

 

He opened his eyes to find a small knife pressed under his chin.

He hadn’t been quite asleep, but he hadn’t been awake either. Niles, clearly not recognizing who he was, held up the knife with the obvious intent to kill the intruder who had invaded a prince of Nohr’s quarters in the dead of night.

“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” Niles asked lowly. The cold, pointed end of the knife pricked the underside of his chin even harder.

“Niles,” he said. “It’s me.”

For a moment he was afraid that his voice was too different now, that the miniscule changes in his face were just enough to render him unrecognizable. Then Niles wavered, pulling the knife back slightly.

“Odin?” Niles said incredulously.

He nodded. He could be Odin for now. They could sort out the important things first.

“It’s me,” Odin said. “Sorry I took so long.”

Niles looked more surprised than Odin had ever seen him. It would be funny, later. When the rapid pounding of his heart cooled and the startled but hopeful look faded from Niles’s features. Odin hoped it would be funny.

Niles's eyes scanned Odin’s face. Odin wondered what he found there.

Niles swiftly sheathed the knife and slid his hand behind Odin’s neck, pulling him into a desperate kiss. Recovering quickly, Odin surged forward to meet him, his eyes sliding shut easily, caressing Niles’s lips with his own. As strange he had felt the past few weeks, kissing Niles was familiar, freeing. His mouth was warm and welcoming. Odin wanted to melt into him.

Eventually they had to pull back. Niles’s hands lingered along Odin’s neck, brushing the thumb of his other hand against Odin’s cheek. Odin’s hands had somehow balled themselves in the collar Niles’s cloak without his realizing.

“Where’s Leo?” Odin asked, breathless.

“Coming,” Niles said. He pressed their foreheads together. “In a moment. _How_ are you here? Why do you look so…”

 _Changed_ , Odin finished. He loosened his grip on Niles’s clothes and laid his hand on top of the one Niles had pressed against his cheek.

“I’ve always looked like this,” Odin confessed, ignoring Niles's look of surprise. “I mean.” He gestured to himself. “Not this young, usually. But—” He wanted to tell Niles and Leo everything. He wished his clumsy tongue worked the truth more easily than it did. “This was how I looked before I came to Nohr.”

Niles's grip tightened. “What?”

Odin was still sitting in the windowsill. Niles had initially hunched over to press a knife to his throat, but he had fallen to his knees sometime around Odin’s revelation. They were more or less on eye-level, though now Niles pulled away slightly more at Odin’s confession.

Niles said, “So you disguised yourself with magic the entire time you’ve been in Nohr?”

He didn’t sound upset. More like he was confirming something he had always suspected. Odin felt guilty about that. He nodded.

Niles sighed. “Considering your lack of past, I can’t say I’m surprised. Is Odin even your real name?”

Again, he didn’t sound entirely upset, but Odin placed his own hand atop the one Niles held against his cheek anyway, as though somehow the skin-on-skin contact could convince Niles of his sincerity. He wished he'd said all this earlier, but it had never seemed the right time and Odin had never found the words.

Now, Odin still hadn't found the words, but it was long past the "right time" to do so.

“Odin Dark is who I am,” he confessed. “It is not a name I can choose to don or not like a mask. Outside Nohr’s borders, I am known as Owain of Ylisse, but neither name is more true to myself than the other.”

Niles soaked in this information. His eyes scanned Odin’s face, and yet again Odin found himself wondering what he thought.

Eventually Niles said, “Aside from your hair, you actually don’t look all that different.”

That wasn’t quite true, but it was a relief to hear nonetheless. Odin smiled in relief.

“So you like the change?” he asked.

Niles made an ambivalent sound.

“I’ve always been partial to blonds,” he said, brushing his fingers over Odin’s ear and threading them through his hair. He smirked. “But brown is a good look on you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Odin said. It wasn't a lie.

“However…” Niles scanned his face again, looking contemplative. “You haven’t always been so young, have you?”

Odin snorted. He was tempted to roll his eyes.

“I’m still an adult, you know.” At Niles’s flat look, he added, “No, I haven’t looked like this in years. Not since I left for Nohr, like I said.”

“Hmm. I do seem to recall you looking a little on the younger side when we first met,” Niles noted. He furrowed his brow. “But that was years ago. Why do you look like this now?”

Odin hesitated. He had some ideas that he, Severa, and Inigo had kicked around a bit during their journey back to Ylisse, but without Anankos there to explain everything, their theories consisted of mostly guesswork. It was possible that whatever glamour the human Anankos had cast upon them had faded upon his draconic counterpart’s death, and so the magic tying them to Nohr had disappeared as well. It was possible their looks had been tied into the skills they had been granted, resulting in their change of appearance. It was possible they had never physically traveled to Nohr at all and that only some projection of their souls had gone instead, but that theory didn't make much sense to Odin. It didn't explain why he'd woken up with the crystal in his pocket. 

Without Anankos to explain, Odin wasn't sure any of them would ever know the one true answer. Maybe Anankos wouldn't have known either.

It was confusing magic, and Odin wasn’t entirely sure what the truth was. Whatever magic had been initially cast to turn the three of them into Selena, Laslow, and Odin aside, they were certainly physically present in Nohr as Severa, Inigo, and Owain now. The fact that they looked just like they had the first time they'd set out to follow Ananko's strange plea for help proved that.

But that was a lot to confess at once, especially with one of their trio missing. Odin said, “I can tell you—both of you—when Leo returns.”

“That will be any minute,” Niles said.

“I’ll tell you then. Everything.”

They looked at each other quietly. Odin swallowed. Without looking, he remembered his circlet sitting on Leo’s desk and the way Niles had desperately clutched at him as he’d reluctantly faded from one reality into another.

“How…” Odin wasn’t sure how to ask. “How have you been?”

Niles rose to his feet. He was a very tall man, and for a moment he loomed over Odin. Then he sat down in the space next to Odin on the windowsill, looking much more tired than Odin had registered him appearing before.

“Fine,” Niles said, not quite stiffly. He wasn’t looking at Odin. “The war between Nohr and Hoshido has officially ended, and Valla is recognized as its own kingdom now. You missed the treaty ceremony.”

There was a jab in there. Odin ignored it and pressed their shoulders together. “How have _you_ been?”

Niles side-eyed him. The happiness from a few moments before had disappeared, and now his expression was guarded, uncertain. His lips parted.

“We missed you every damned day.”

Of course they had. Odin had missed them just as fiercely.

“Me too,” Odin said softly. It didn't feel like enough.

Niles looked at him. Hard. “We thought you were dead.”

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Odin said, voice full of grief. “I swear to you, if I could have told you everything right then and there and prevented what happened, _I would have told you._ But I didn’t know what was going to happen.” He looked at Niles, wanting desperately for him to understand. ”I didn’t want to go.”

Niles looked like he wanted to be mad. The memory of the day he claimed he had accepted Odin as Leo's proper retainer, secrets and all, nipped at the edges of the present moment.

“I came back to you as soon as I could,” Odin pleaded.

Eventually, Niles sighed, “I know.” The tension bled out of him. He looked away again. “That’s why it hurt so badly when you disappeared. Because we knew you didn't want to go."

A thought crossed Odin’s mind. He bit the inside of his mouth to keep himself grounded and this thoughts from running away with themselves.

“There wasn’t…”

“No,” Niles said. He caught on without Odin having to say it. “There wasn’t a body.”

Absently, Odin nodded. That was a good thing. Probably.

Niles looked down at his scarred palms. “There wasn’t a body,” he said again. “I had you, and then you were gone.”

Odin reached out and lifted Niles’s hand to his mouth, kissing the back of his knuckles.

“You had me,” he agreed, his breath ghosting over Niles’s hand. “And I was so _grateful_  that you did. I didn’t know what was happening, but—” He didn’t want to say he’d been in pain, exactly. He didn’t know what Niles would have thought of that. “I was so glad I got to be with you before I left.”

Niles was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Leo didn’t make it in time.”

Odin said nothing. He hadn’t exactly had a choice.

“I had you,” Niles continued. “Leo missed you by only a few seconds.” He looked to Odin, gauging his reaction. “It really bothers him, you know.”

Odin could imagine. “I’ll apologize to him when he returns.”

Which, again, would be any moment. Odin both desperately wished for Leo’s presence and wished for nothing to break the quiet air that had settled over himself and Niles at once.

It would take more than an apology to mend the scar of Odin’s sudden disappearance—presumed _death_ —but it was at least a start. Niles made a small sound of agreement, letting his eyes fall shut as Odin gently warmed his cold fingers with his own.

 

 

 

When Leo returned, he stared at Odin for so long Odin began to wonder if something was terribly wrong.

When Leo unfroze and color returned to his cheeks, he kissed Odin much like Niles had—greedy and tired and sad—but the part that stood out to Odin the most was the way Leo held him. Gently at first, as though afraid his fingers would slide right through Odin’s skin. Then tighter as he became more sure of himself.

“I’m sorry,” Leo whispered against his cheek. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Odin shook his head, aware of the way Leo’s arms tightened further around his torso as he did. Something wet slid down his neck.

“But you _were_ ,” he insisted.

How could Leo, who existed as a constant presence in Odin’s chest and the logical voice in the back of his head right before he made a foolish decision, ever think otherwise?

Niles watched them for a time with soft eyes and eventually corralled them into at least laying down on the bed "if they you don't plan on moving for a while anyway."

None of them bothered to remove their clothes. They just wanted to hold one another.

 

 

 

Some time in the early hours of the morning, Odin told them the truth. All of it.

He began with Anankos. Then he retracted that beginning and started again, sometime earlier. He began with a tactician asleep in a field and ended with three young adults from an alternate timeline being asked for help. And the trio had agreed, simply because they knew someone in need when they saw one.

“And then you hated me when I got here,” Odin ended. They knew how the rest of the story went.

“And then we hated you,” Niles agreed, some humor in his voice. His arm was slung low around Odin’s hips. “With a passion.”

“And then we grew to love you,” Leo said. He reached for both of their hands, and they reached back.

There was more to say than that, in all honesty, but the sun was closer to risen than not and Odin suspected King Xander and Lady Camilla would both be rather preoccupied in the morning. They had time, now. They could _take_ their time now.

And when Niles kissed the shell of his ear and called him “my love,” Odin decided the discussion of his real name could wait for some time as well, because no other identity mattered besides that.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on my [tumblr!](http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/) I get a lot of FE14 meta and fic related asks there, so feel free to browse through my "asks" or "fe14" tag for some extra stuff from me and your fellow readers you may not see over here. Or send in a question of your own if you had one! Thanks for reading!


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